


Dawn

by AwesomeEyeroll



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 19:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17668808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeEyeroll/pseuds/AwesomeEyeroll
Summary: Jamie and Claire meet for the first time





	Dawn

Claire felt herself slowly rising out of sleep. She was in her own bed nestled into the clean cotton of her pillow, freshly changed this morning as she had frantically tried to make the most of the few free hours she had. Pressed up against her back she felt warmth. Heat. A warm body pressed against her back, a large hand on her stomach, the gentle breath of another on her neck. For a moment she melted into it, the rightness of it. The two bodies fit together as if they had been made that way, spooned together in the midst of egyptian cotton and the murky light of dawn creeping through the crack where the curtains didn’t quite meet. The body behind her shifted slightly, nuzzling into her neck just behind her hairline. She realised then that the body behind her was not the one that used to be there. The one that until four weeks ago would slumber next to her in these same sheets. Clarity in the midst of confusion. Frank was gone. He had come home on an ordinary Tuesday almost a month ago and announced he was leaving. He would be moving to Boston with his secretary, Sandy. And then he had left. And she hadn’t seen or heard anything of him since that moment. She has spent a week wrapped in a duvet on her couch until Louise, Joe and Geillis had physically broken into her flat. They had forced her out of her cocoon, into the shower and back into the world. Which, had, in the midst of her horror, loss and embarrassment, had the temerity to keep on turning. Whilst truthfully, she could not claim to be heartbroken (which she admitted to herself to be both a relief and source of sadness. Shouldn’t she be heartbroken at the loss of her fiance?), her equilibrium had taken a hit. The routine, the normalcy of her life had been pushed off kilter and she was struggling to remember who she was.

The body behind her shifted again, his hand moving slightly on her stomach. The party. It had been Mary’s birthday, she needed to show her face. Just for an hour. An hour and then she could return home to her bolt hole, she could return to puzzling out where she should go from here, now that she could in fact go anywhere. As it was she’d stayed for three. It was a nice party and she was surprised to find she enjoyed being there so much more without Frank’s presence. Frank had gotten on well enough with her friends but never actively sought to spend time with them and she’d always felt slightly on edge when they were in social situations with them. Frank had a sense of humour but lacked the ability to be self deprecating and as such did not always enjoy the banter they others shared. She’d spent the evening sitting in the kitchen whilst Mary’s boyfriend, Rupert held court. The two were an unlikely match, the quiet and neat english pediatrician and the bawdy Scot. But Rupert was, much to the surprise of most casual acquaintances, a well respected speech therapist, which was much belied by his booming voice, filthy laugh and impressively hirsute aspect. Sipping Gunpowder gin, she laughed at his irreverent jokes, in which it seemed nothing and no one was off limits. In the midst of an elaborately told, and in places faithfully re-enacted , tale about the recent stag do of someone who appeared to go by the colourful nickname of Bollock Chops Bertie, her phone had lit up. And it had been Frank. The message itself had been bland. He was in Boston, could she forward his mail, the landlord had agreed that the lease could be signed over to her only if she wished to stay in the flat. To the point. Cold. Finishing her drink she left the kitchen and went out into the hall, opening uber on her phone she went. Whilst she could not in all honesty claim to be in love with Frank any longer, she had expected more of a sense of...something… when he contacted her after his long silence. An apology, a mea culpa, a regret that they hadn’t made it. Instead all she had gotten was grim practicality and she wondered how long it had been since Frank had really cared. Her uber app spun on, there were seemingly very few drivers in the area and in her frustration she swore out loud and could feel the tears building in the backs of her eyes. She just wanted to go home, shower and get into bed. 

“Are you alright, lass?” The voice was gentle but it startled her in the quiet and darkness of the hallway, lit as it was only by the light coming from the kitchen. 

“What? Oh? I just need to go home” A tear did spill then and she back handed it away, her face colouring with embarrassment that she should be standing in a hallway at a party crying like a drunk teenager. 

“Do you live far, is it walkable?” The voice asked again, still soft. In the dim light she could see it was a tall man, she’d seen him earlier, his height making him stand out in the low ceilinged rooms of Mary’s terrace house. 

“Um? I guess? But I really don’t want to be walking home on a Saturday night alone”

“I, I could could walk ye home. If ye liked? Uber’s are like gold dust at 11pm on a Saturday ye ken. They’re all in town at this time” She could see him fidgeting as he asked this.

“I. well. I wouldn’t want to drag you away from the party. Just because I am the spectre at the feast, I wouldn't want to ruin anyone else’s night”

“Ah, ye’d be doing be a favour. I’ve heard all Rupert’s stories before and to be honest I’m no really in the mood for the tequila slide and that appears to be what Louise and Geillis are setting up in the yard”

She laughed lightly at this. 

“Well, I suppose, if you’re willing to save me, I can save you. What’s your name? Just so I’m not being walked home by a total stranger”

“James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. But ye can call me Jamie.”

She held her hand out to him. “Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. You can call me Dr Beauchamp” She laughed as she said this and Jamie smiled. 

“Well then Dr Beauchamp, let us away.” A loud whoop sounded from the back of the house. “If nothing else we might be required to provide bail money if one of the neighbours calls the police later” He crooked his arm at her and she took it laughing and they went out into the night.

His breath tickled her neck slightly as she lay there. They had walked home together and she had been surprised at how easy the conversation was considering not fifteen minutes earlier he had been a complete stranger and she had been weeping into her uber app. He had told her all about his job and his recent trip to Brighton (his version of Bollock Chops Bertie’s stag do was slightly tamer than Rupert’s), she had told him about her job and how she had ended up in Glasgow as part of her medical training and liked it enough to stay. About half way back to Claire’s apartment the rain that had been threatening all day finally came and they dashed through the rain slicked streets hand in hand. 

By the time they had arrived at Claire’s they were both soaked to the skin. Jamie’s shirt clung to him and Claire’s curly hair hung limp around her face. She pulled him into her hallway and switched on the light. Having only seen him in the midst of the party and then the half light as they journeyed home she was taken back at how, well, glorious he was. Talk and well built, with deep red hair and the bluest of eyes. She felt suddenly a little shy.

“Would, would you like to stay a little while? I mean I could put your clothes in the dryer and we could have a cup of tea and by the time they dry hopefully you’ll be able to get home” She trailed off the end of the sentence mortified that it might sound like she was propositioning him.

“Aye” He replied holding his sodden shirt away from his body slightly, “A wee chance to dry off would be nice, I think”

He had stripped down to his pants in the middle of her kitchen and much as she had tried to avert her eyes she couldn’t help but notice how powerfully built he was. The hardness of his muscles highly apparent under the harsh kitchen lighting. Changing herself in her bedroom she brought him out a robe, which was woefully too small causing them both to laugh at the sight.

She made a pot of tea and they both sat on the couch savouring the warmth of both the drink and of finally being dry. The easiness of conversation found on their walk through the dark was no less comfortable in the bright warmth of Claire’s living room and as tea moved onto whiskey and then back to tea they found themselves telling each other everything. Claire told Jamie of her break up with Frank, confessing the she realised now a large part of the attraction was his staid nature, his lack of unpredictability. At least until he had left her and run off to Boston with another woman. She told him of the loss of her parents aged only five, her loving but unconventional life with her bachelor uncle, an archaeologist of the old school who lived to racket around from one remote dig site to another. Her drive to become a surgeon and her pride that she was on the cusp of achieving that. In turn he told her about his life. About the death of his mother when he was a boy of only eight, his father’s death suddenly, of a stroke only a year ago whilst he was working away in France. Of his decision to leave his life in France, including his beautiful but ultimately mismatched girlfriend, Annalise, in order to come back and take up the family business. As they spoke, both of them moved closer. Not consciously, but both of them yielding to the pull of the other. Their hands twined together, fingers dancing and playing together as they spoke. Both overwhelmed by the rightness of the moment, the unforced nature of their connection, their mutual desire to be in the other’s orbit, their gravitational pull. 

At 4 am they had both stood and Claire had led them into her bedroom. Here they undressed and climbed into bed together, bodies flush against each other, sharing warmth, sharing their dreams. There was no question of anything more, both knew there was all the time in the world for that and that the connection that had been forged since that meeting in the hallway of that little terraced house in Glasgow, was strong and enduring. As the inky dawn grew steadily lighter, Claire shifted slightly, lying closer, feeling the heat of him and letting it seep into her bones and into her soul and soothe her. A new day rising.


End file.
